RFK Jr. Tells Anti-Vaccine Conference They Have a 'Friend' in Trump's White House

Since the U.S. measles case count passed 2,289 for all of 2025 and kept climbing into 2026, the outbreak has grown to 3,294 confirmed cases across 47 jurisdictions as of September 10, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Four of those deaths have now been reported in Pennsylvania, per The Guardian, adding to three earlier deaths in Texas and Arizona.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered the keynote address Thursday at the Children's Health Defense conference in Washington, D.C., the group he chaired for nearly two decades before resigning ahead of his confirmation. It was his first appearance at the event since taking office, according to KIRO 7.

"You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House"

Kennedy told the crowd Trump has directed him to strengthen vaccine research, transparency and parental choice, and credited the administration with accomplishing things "that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago," per KIRO 7. He said he wanted to move faster but was constrained by law: "In government, a bunch of things have to happen before something else happens or you get sued," he said, according to ABC News.

Kennedy addressed the active measles outbreak just once in his roughly 90-minute speech, per The Guardian and MSNBC. "In our country we care about rare illnesses and deaths. We care about every child who dies from measles. They get headlines," he said. "I'd ask you to care about children who are dying or suffering or being injured by vaccine injuries."

He went on to describe "vaccine-injured children" as "damaged," citing allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, and claimed diabetes, SIDS and anorexia can be vaccine side effects, according to The Guardian's transcript of the speech.

The safety-data argument

Kennedy's strongest point, laid out in detail by the Epoch Times, is about the state of vaccine safety monitoring itself. "We have no idea what the risk profile is for these products, and that means we can't really make the kind of risk-benefit analysis that my agency is supposed to do," he said, calling the lack of long-term studies "regulatory malpractice" spanning 30 years. He pointed specifically to the hepatitis B vaccine's regulatory insert, which he said shows the shot was tested in only 147 children monitored for five days across three clinical trials.

That is a real and checkable claim about the insert's documented study design, and it reflects a genuine, longstanding argument from vaccine skeptics that post-market surveillance in the U.S. is thin. Whether that gap means the vaccines are unsafe, or simply under-studied by modern standards, is a separate question Kennedy did not fully answer on stage.

Where critics push back

Dr. Fiona Havers, a former CDC vaccine expert, told ABC News that Children's Health Defense "has spread false and misleading information that has contributed directly to declining vaccination rates across the country," and said Kennedy's appearance "legitimizes CHD's anti-vaccine message" while undercutting the CDC's own outreach.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's opinion section went further, arguing in a piece published this week that Kennedy's claim the U.S. is "doing a better job than any country in the world" controlling measles does not hold up against the numbers. The WHO's European Region cut measles cases 73% between 2024 and 2025, the Inquirer noted, while U.S. cases rose from 2,289 in 2025 to 3,294 already this year, the highest count since 1991.

The Inquirer also took aim at claims from Kennedy and Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican running for governor, that immigration is driving the outbreak. Citing federal data, the Inquirer said only 16 measles cases this year involved international visitors, while 95% of U.S. cases are outbreak-associated domestic spread, and 95% of cases occurred in unvaccinated people or those with unknown vaccination status.

Policy already blocked in court

Kennedy also touted administration moves to narrow the childhood vaccine schedule and reshape the CDC's vaccine advisory panel, plus an executive order calling for spacing out the MMR shot into separate doses, against the recommendation of major medical groups, according to KIRO 7. A federal judge has already blocked the schedule change, per the Epoch Times, and an appeal is pending.

Fox News reported this week on a dispute between Kennedy and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro over two infant deaths in Lancaster County possibly tied to measles, a disagreement the Inquirer says has left the state's own health department short on the information needed to prevent further harm.

Recent polling cited by The Guardian and MSNBC found roughly a quarter of Americans now hold doubts about the MMR vaccine, even as a majority disapprove of the administration's handling of the outbreak. Whether that appeal, and the blocked vaccine-schedule changes it covers, gets resolved before the outbreak grows further remains an open question in federal court.